Posts Tagged ‘1997 Monaco Grand Prix’

Rubens Barrichello guides his Stewart around the difficult, wet confines of Monaco in 1997…

In a race shortened by very difficult conditions, Rubens Barrichelo demonstrated his undoubted speed and finesse. 30 minutes before the race started rain began to fall, causing the teams a conundrum as to tyre choice and car setup. Schumi led from the start in his Ferrari F310B, the Jordans were very quick having a rain setup and great Bridgestone wets, better than the Goodyears on the day.

Damon Hill’s Arrows was out early after a collision with Mika Hakkinen’s McLaren, Frenzen’s Williams hit a barrier, and then Villeneuve too hit some of the local topography in the other Williams. Schumacher continued to lead by 30 seconds from Rubens who took a great 2nd and the first podium for Stewart, the SF01 Ford in only its 5th race. It was a great, early result for Jackie and Paul Stewart’s Ford supported team, the Alan Jenkins designed car powered by Ford’s VJ Zetec-R 3 litre V10, a Cosworth Engineering design of course. Eddie Irvine was 3rd in the other Ferrari F310B.

In some ways the Stewart result flattered to deceive; results were predictably hard to come by, 1998 was very tough but the Gary Anderson designed 1999 SF03 powered by a new CR-1 Ford V10 took a win at the European Grand Prix, Johnny Herbert was victorious that day at the Nurburgring.

Ford then acquired the team from the Stewart’s in full renaming it Jaguar Racing for 2000 before its 2005 sale and morph into the rather successful Red Bull Racing…